Creating Content That Works for Your Business
Many businesses are focusing on the need to create fresh, new content for their websites in an effort to improve their sales, customer service experience, or raise brand awareness. Although many have learned how to create fresh, unique content, others are still unaware of just how crucial it is to have a carefully considered and organized strategy in place for content creation.
There’s a lot to consider: audience, reach, aims, timing, delivery, to name but a few.
Below are three essential steps that will ensure each and every new piece of content you create reaches exactly the right people at the right time, in order for you to maximize its efficiency and meet your goals.
1. Define Your Goals
Content marketing can have huge payoffs, but in order for it to work for your business you must invest time, and lots of it. To make sure that time spent is well invested, it’s important that you start with your end goal in mind. Before you start, you’ll want to be sure of the goal for your content marketing efforts.
There are numerous business goals you can have:
- Brand awareness
- Lead generation and nurturing
- Customer conversion
- Customer service
- Upsells
- Subscribers
Depending on your situation, any of the goals above could be a good fit for you. Whatever your reason, get focused on the end result before you start. You’ll have a way better chance of building an asset that works for your business in the way you want it to.
Get Subscribers, Get Customers
When someone subscribes to your businesses newsletter, they give you permission to market to them. Well-crafted permission based email marketing can allow you to develop a one-to-one relationship to a mass audience. You’ll need to start by acquiring subscribers. While growing your subscriber list, take time to create email blasts, newsletters and infographics that will grab their attention, and turn them into customers. Keep in mind few, if anyone, will give up their email to be added to a newsletter, but many will happily exchange their email to download a premium piece of content such as an e-book, a cheat sheet or a coupon.
2. Define Your Audience Persona
If your content marketing is to be a success then you must plan your content to fill the needs and wants of your audience rather than your own. Before you start your content marketing program, get a very clear image on who you’re talking to with your content by developing at least one audience persona.
For example, a nursery school will have all these audience personas: children, parents, teachers and local authorities. Content for each of these personas would be very different. You can develop your audience personas by asking a few key questions of your audience:
1. Who is he or she?
2. What information does this person need?
3. What does this person care about?
Don’t assume the answers, instead interview your audience. Take time with this process but don’t shoot for perfection, you just need to be detailed enough to guide your content creators.
3. Ensure All Your Content Has A Call-To-Action
Effective content that works for your business will always give opportunity for your audience to respond. Whether that be sharing your content via social media, downloading your content upgrade, buying your product or service or any other action you want someone to take. If the body of your content has served its purpose it will have engaged, educated, inspired and built trust with your audience. That trust can be repaid to you in kind, such as a share or comment on your blog, or in business with the purchase of your product or service. Always tell your audience what they should do next. Keep them moving through your content segmentation grid.
Call-To-Action Tips
Here are some tips to consider that will help you craft calls-to-action that generate a better response:
Ask questions End your content with a question. It will encourage your readers to post a comment (a micro-commitment).
Clarity Make your calls-to-action very clear. Use simple language and display your main call-to-action in a stand out color.
Reduce friction Use the minimum number of form fields possible for sign up forms. Make it frictionless for your audience to take the next step.
Using these three steps will ensure that your content is efficient, well-timed, and reaches the correct target audience for your goals. Once you’ve got the process down, you’ll find that making new content is more efficient than ever. If you don’t have the time to put in to create effective content marketing, call us at DMA Solutions.
